Five Memoirs for Young Widows
On a beautiful June day in San Diego, just five months after my 44-year-old husband died of brain cancer, I found myself at lunch with three other young widows. It was the first day of Camp Widow, and when the last workshop of the morning ended, we each turned to the people around us with a hopeful request: wanna grab lunch?
So began our connecting over the shared experiences of losing our husbands far too soon. Toward the end of the lunch, one of the ladies mentioned that they didn’t know anyone in their personal circles — their kids’ schools, their neighborhoods, their workplaces — who was also widowed with kids or teens at home.
It’s a struggle I hear from my listeners of the Widowed Parent Podcast time and again: people feel very alone. They just don’t have any other young(er) widows around to connect with. It’s one of the reasons why Camp Widow is great, and why people turn to some of the many widow-related Facebook groups out there for support. It turns out there are a lot of young widows out there — we just need to know where to find them.
Books are another great way to feel less alone. Memoirs, in particular. There’s something about reading other people’s stories, hearing about their journeys and reflections, and living in their shoes for a few hundred pages that helps us feel connected and supported.
One of the great privileges I have as a podcast host is to interview authors with books that I think would interest my listeners. Some are nonfiction books with information on specific topics related to grief or parenting. And some are memoirs.
Here are five memoirs written by widowed parents that are worth reading:
From Scratch, by Tembi Locke
Tembi Locke is an actor and a New York Times bestselling author. In From Scratch, she shares with readers her unlikely cross-cultural love story with her Sicilian chef husband, what she learned as his caregiver for ten years, and her grief journey in the years that followed. This book is being turned into a movie, with filming on location in Italy having just wrapped. Read this book now so you’ll be ready when the movie comes out.
Pick up Tembi’s book and listen to my interview with her.
Widowish, by Melissa Gould
Melissa became a widowed parent after losing her husband, Joel, to West Nile Virus. She generously shares her journey with us, and shares her perspective and reflections on being both a younger-than-usual widowed person, and a widowed parent of a teenager. People wanting to better understand grief and loss, and the widow experience, will learn a lot from this book. People who are widowed themselves will feel less alone after reading it.
Pick up Melissa’s book and listen to my interview with her.
Black Widow, by Leslie Gray Streeter
Leslie became a widowed parent after the sudden death of her husband, Scott, in 2015. At the time they were in the process of adopting their two-year-old son. As it says on the back of her book, “With her signature warmth, hilarity, and tendency to overshare, Leslie Gray Streeter gives us real talk about love, loss, grief, and healing in your own way.” Her book is both funny and touching; if you’re a widowed parent, I know you’ll recognize much in her story, even if your situation is different.
Pick up Leslie’s book and listen to my interview with her.
You Can’t Do It Alone, by Maria Quiban Whitesell with Lauren Schneider
Maria is the morning weather anchor on Good Day LA, and Lauren is the clinical director of child and adolescent programs at OUR HOUSE Grief Support Center in Los Angeles. Their book is a memoir based on Maria’s journey with her late husband’s brain cancer-which is, of course, a subject near and dear to my heart. Lauren adds her professional perspective throughout the book in sections called “Grief Therapist’s Notebook.” Especially important is the discussion around how important it is to be honest with kids, no matter how difficult the situation is.
Pick up Maria and Lauren’s book and listen to my interview with them.
Filled with Gold, by Melissa Pierce
Melissa is a widowed parent, an author, and a self-care advocate. She has two sons, and her older son really struggled as a teen after his dad died. This book is an important read if you have a child who is struggling and you’re finding that the usual options, such as grief support or outpatient therapy, are not helping.
Of course, you may also like my memoir, Future Widow: Losing My Husband, Saving My Family, and Finding My Voice. Leslie Gray Streeter said that it is “riveting, real and all too relatable, the kind of stuff you tell your friend in a late-night call when no one can hear you cry. Stunning.” Check it out.
I hope that diving into these books and the worlds of these young widows will be helpful to you in your grief. These authors have put their heart and soul into their books. I know, because I interviewed all of them — so check out the interviews to hear directly from them, too.
One of my favorite parenting authors, Julie Lythcott-Haims, is also a memoir writer. She has a terrific memoir, Real American, about growing up Black and biracial in white spaces. On the AmWriting podcast, she said this: “Memoir is an act of service.”
It’s true. I know that each of the authors I’ve mentioned here hopes their books will help other widowed people like themselves. I hope you find them meaningful, and I hope you feel less alone after reading them.
If you know someone else who needs these books, please share this article with them.
Jenny Lisk is the founder of the Widowed Parent Institute. Her books, Future Widow and Widowed Parents Unite, and her show, The Widowed Parent Podcast, guide the journey of solo parenting after loss.
Jenny’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, Katie Couric Media, Yahoo Life, ParentMap, and more. You can download her free resources for widowed parents and for supporting grieving friends.
Originally published at jennylisk.com on September 12, 2021.
